This invention relates generally to grape vine grooming and more particularly concerns apparatus for pruning single curtain wine and juice grape vines.
Proper grooming of vines having a drooping growth habit renders the vines more active photosynthetically and allows greater penetration of light into the fruit zone and lower buds. Increased light in the vine improves fruit quality and productivity.
Manual pruning of the vines is impractical because of the cost and difficulty in obtaining adequate hand labor to accomplish the task in a timely manner. Mechanical hedging as presently known is merely horizontal and vertical cutting which does not distinguish the type of growth removed in the process. Desirable dormant one-year old mature canes are removed together with the undesirable lateral canes which cause shading and prevent adequate sunlight exposure and inferior, weak and shaded canes which are not productive of quality fruit. Proper pruning is a selective process of reducing bud numbers while retaining premium quality fruiting buds on one year old canes.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a mechanical pruner for automatically pruning single curtain grape vines. Another object of this invention is to provide a mechanical pruner which is selective to retain the premium quality fruiting buds on one-year old canes. A further object of this invention is to provide a mechanical pruner which shields dormant one-year old mature canes out of the path of the pruning cutters. It is also an object of this invention to provide a mechanical pruner which selectively removes inferior, weak and shaded canes.